The Story Of O’Fallon Hemp Hop Rye
-By Head Brewer Brian Owens
Tony (Caradonna) came into the brewery one day and mentioned hemp beer. It was something that he had been thinking about for a while, I think. He used to distribute a hemp beer back in the '90's and he sold quite a bit of it. I think that is what sparked his interest. I was a bit skeptical at first because the first thing that came to my mind, like many people, was marijuana. And then I did a little research. I quickly realized that Tony might really be on to something here. I loved the idea of getting behind the hemp movement and the more I learned the more excited I got, but I still didn't know at the time how hemp could contribute to the flavor in beer, so we started playing around. I ordered in a few different varieties of hemp – toasted hemp seeds, salted hemp seeds and hemp seed cake. We quickly decided on the unsalted toasted hemp seeds for their great nutty flavor.
The next step was to experiment with how and where to use the seeds and also what type of beer they would work best in. We brewed quite a few pilot batches, choosing a few different styles to experiment with. We finally decided that rye was a good flavor to pair up with the hemps seeds. You get the spice from the rye and nuttiness from the hemp seeds and the two really work together.
As brewers we really liked the idea of hopping the beer up but quickly realized that we lost the hemp seed flavor if we were too heavy with the hops and we wanted to keep the beer balanced between all of the flavors.
In the end I think we ended up brewing the beer that we all love and are all very proud of and something that we can also use to help educate people on the many uses and benefits of hemp. We are the only industrialized nation in the world who does not recognize hemp for what it is.
